


The Times That Try Men's Souls

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - American Revolution, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - War, Background Historical Figures, Canon-Typical Violence and Gore, Codependency, Gratuitous Descriptions of Historical Daily Life, Historical Inaccuracy, Infidelity, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 15:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6913204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The man wears no coat—not British red, not Hessian blue—just a set of clothes more ragged than even the poorest of their American fighters. Dirt cakes the knees of his breeches and his graying blond hair is greasy where he’s tied it back. In the dark of night, with only firelight to cast shadows, his face looks like a skull, sun-reddened skin drawn gaunt over his cheekbones.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>The soldiers, only moments ago rowdy, are completely silent.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>The man drops his musket in front of Crawford. “I served Hesse-Kassel. Now I serve you.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The year is 1782. Hannibal Lecter is a former Hessian mercenary with a certain talent for his work, employed by the Continental Army. Will Graham is his reluctant assistant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Times That Try Men's Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WomanKings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WomanKings/gifts).



> "These are the times that try men's souls." -Thomas Paine, 'The American Crisis', 1776.
> 
> This is a completely self-indulgent AU I've been working on to get my writing groove back. It may well be one of the longest things I've written in this fandom, and it also may be my favorite (I have a particular weakness for historical AUs, and the American Revolution is one of my favorite eras). 
> 
> This is relatively close to accuracy to the period, but of course I took liberties (all unnamed battles are made up on my part, as are some of the background events). The food and clothing are actually period-accurate; I spent most of my awkward middle school years volunteering and going to events at historic Yorktown and Williamsburg. I've put a little glossary in the end notes if there's something you don't recognize. 
> 
> If you need to know who is the minor character death, it will appear in the end notes of the next part, when it happens.

Nobody hears the footsteps until the man’s in the middle of their camp, musket in his hand, expression perfectly flat.

The man wears no coat—not British red, not Hessian blue—just a set of clothes more ragged than even the poorest of their American fighters. Dirt cakes the knees of his breeches and his graying blond hair is greasy where he’s tied it back. In the dark of night, with only firelight to cast shadows, his face looks like a skull, sun-reddened skin drawn gaunt over his cheekbones.

The soldiers, only moments ago rowdy, are completely silent.

The man drops his musket in front of Crawford. “I served Hesse-Kassel. Now I serve you.” His accent is heavy, but his English is understandable.

Crawford eyes the man. “We aren’t recruiting.”

“I work for who I want. I do not want to work for Hessian army. I want to work for you. So I work for you.”

“Son, what are you after?”

The man kicks his musket up from the ground and catches it easily, loads it faster than any of the men around the campfire have ever seen anyone load a musket, turns around, and fires it without flinching. A bird screams in the treetops and falls to the ground. It’s a mark even Crawford thinks he would have struggled to hit, and he’d risen to command by being known as one of the best marksmen in the Continental Army. “British soldiers executed five prisoners for refusing to give up ideas of freedom. I killed the British soldiers. Now I am here. And I work for you.”

Crawford whistles between his teeth, a low sound. “You’ll need a uniform.”

* * *

_Dear Will,_

_Joshua and I miss you terribly still. Williamsburg is busier than normal, but it perhaps it is well you have left us. There is talk that one of the teachers at the College was executed for treason, though he had done nothing wrong but speak his mind. Father is worried, so we will travel out to the country to wait out the danger here._

_I hope you are keeping safe—_

There’s a grunting noise and someone is pushing Will to the side of his log, letter from Molly knocked from his hands and now lost to the mud. Will is about to curse at whoever did it until he looks up and sees the Hessian. The words die on his tongue.

“Excuse me,” Will says curtly, getting up as quickly as he can. It’s not that he’s afraid of the Hessian, as it seems most are—rather, he’s noticed multiple times now that the mercenary often stares at him like a cat stares at a mouse. He does not care to find what happens when the Hessian finally manages to catch him.

The Hessian doesn’t say anything, shoveling gruel in his mouth. In the weeks since his arrival, he has not spoken once. He clearly understands English, able to listen to the Pennsylvanian soldiers speak German—translated a memo in French to English from Lafayette to Crawford, even—but he doesn’t say a single word of any language at all.

* * *

Crawford approaches Will slowly.

Will knows that stony expression. It means bad fortune is soon to come. He finishes packing his tent and steels himself. Something had happened to Molly, maybe, or—

“Hannibal asked for you to accompany him.”

Will freezes.

“Hannibal—the Hessian—he is doing… a personal favor for the general. I was to ask him what he required. I asked.”

Will sets his pack down and squares his shoulders. “And so he asked for me.”

“Yes.” At least Crawford has enough honor not to lie to him. “It’s the only thing he asked for.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Will asks drily.

“You’d be defying direct orders from General Washington.”

Will can see the Hessian standing near Crawford’s tent, staring straight at him with that predator’s gaze. “Of course.”

* * *

“What will we be doing on this mission of yours?” Will asks, breaking off part of his hard tack.

Hannibal—which even amongst the Hessians must be an uncommon name—swallows another gulp of chicory. “You will wait outside.”

“Are you serious?” But if the Hessian is joking, there’s no sign of it in his expression. Hannibal doesn’t bother with a reply.

The Virginian cold bites at Will’s fingers as he shoves another piece of hard tack in his mouth dourly. “I don’t find you that interesting,” Will says impulsively. He knows that just about everyone in the camp is fascinated with the typically mute Hessian and his mysterious origins—there are stories going about, more now than ever since one of the camp women was able to find out that indeed, there _had_ been ten British soldiers who were slaughtered in their beds after the execution of five Patriot prisoners of war. But Will had never doubted Hannibal’s story—Hannibal had the flat look in his eyes of a man who had developed a _taste_ for war—much less hero-worshipped him for it.

At that, Hannibal looks up from his chicory with a small smile. “You will.”

* * *

A bit before midnight, Hannibal and Will set for the British encampment. Hannibal has dressed them both in black, clothes borrowed from half a dozen different men back at camp. He’d had Will take the bullets from their guns, lest an accidental gunshot give them away.

Will knows now why this had to be done by Hannibal. There are supposed to be rules in war, a system of honor and regulations that separate a battle from a massacre. The few other soldiers as good as Hannibal they have in their army would protest. Secret midnight missions are not honorable.

About twenty paces from the outskirts of the British camp, Hannibal pauses and drops his gun. “This is where you wait.”

Will tightens his grip on his gun. “What should I do if I get ambushed?”

Hannibal purses his lips, like he’s offended by the implications. “You have a gun. I will be back quickly.”

Will can only watch as Hannibal carefully treads through the brush. The Hessian seems in his element here, in the dark of night, silent and focused.

For a while, the night is quiet and Will almost wonders what Hannibal could be doing.

Then he hears a muffled scream and footsteps approaching where he’s standing, and Will loads his gun.

For a moment, Will doesn’t recognize Hannibal in the stolen uniform coat, blood splattered over his cheek and across his shirt.

It’s then that Will sees the head in Hannibal’s head, and promptly vomits.

* * *

Hannibal spears the head—which Will now can recognize as being one of the British commanders—on his bayonet and leaves his musket propped up in front of Crawford’s tent.

“Is this how it’s done in Germany?” Will asks, still staring at the head with its glassy eyes, unable to look away. He finds it hard to believe that Hannibal’s ways were common even amongst an army of guns-for-hire.

“I am not a German.” Hannibal is already halfway back to his own tent, stripping off the stolen coat and throwing it in a basket of mending for one of the camp women to fix.

“I thought you were a Hessian.”

“Yes.”

“So, you served in the German army, but you aren’t a German?”

“I was in Germany as a surgeon. I was drafted.”

Will throws his hands up. “So why are you here now? Doing… this, and not in the field hospital?”

Hannibal turns around and smiles at Will like the cat who has finally caught his mouse. “Good night, Will.” And with that, he crawls into his tent.

* * *

Hannibal is good at what he does.

Will cannot deny that. _Nobody_ could deny that. Hannibal is efficient, quick, and intelligent. He has a talent, if mercenary work could be considered a _talent_. In the past month, Hannibal has taken out five highly ranked British officers and three British spies, and Will has always waited outside, like a hound waiting for their master to return.

It’s causing panic amongst the British, this nameless assassin who creeps in at night and kills their leaders, never seen and never heard. They call him a ghost.

Hannibal does not seem to care one way or another about the rumors. He only waits for their next mission.

* * *

The letters from Molly pile up in Will’s pack, so he takes to burning them.

She writes that Joshua is growing up quickly, has taken on an apprenticeship with a blacksmith where they’re hiding away in the Virginia countryside. That she misses Will, and Joshua misses his father, but she understands he’s serving their new country out on the frontlines, an honorable soldier.

What could he possibly write back to his wife? That he no longer is on the frontlines of the battle, but instead is the travelling companion of the Rebel army’s private mercenary? Better to let her think he is an honorable soldier than to tell her the truth. There is no honor is what Hannibal does.

Hannibal watches him when he burns her letters, but he says nothing. The man has no wife waiting for him, no children. He could not understand what it must be like.

* * *

It is in the Southern summer heat that Hannibal strikes for the first time in the daylight.

They wear stolen Hessian uniforms and carry Hessian guns. The Englishmen hate the Hessians and aside from sneering comments that Will pretends not to understand and Hannibal replies to in a broken mixture of German and English, nobody in the British camp questions their presence. They keep far enough away from the actual Hessians at the camp to not be found out.

They weave their way through camp, between tents and gathering spaces, until Hannibal finds a tree near the outskirts that looks over the camp. He nods once at Will.

By now Will knows what Hannibal means even when he isn’t speaking. He loads the guns as Hannibal climbs the tree and hands one to him.

The first gunshot comes as a surprise and there’s shouting and yelling as soldiers scramble. That’d be the camp surgeon, to make sure nobody survived this battle. Will passes Hannibal the next musket.

The second gunshot triggers chaos and screaming, and Will hears someone shouting that the commander was dead. Soldiers are running, and the ones supposed to be on guard duty start scouring for the source of the shots.

Shots three, four, and five happen one right after another, and the guards closest to Hannibal’s position are downed. Will reloads the muskets Hannibal passes down to him and wipes the sweat from his brow. The smell of gunpowder is overwhelming in the heat.

Hannibal does not shoot for a long minute and Will looks up, unsure of what the Hessian could possibly be doing. Sweating and staring carefully down the barrel of his gun, Hannibal looks more focused than Will’s ever seen anyone look before.

In the distance, Will can hear the Continental Army’s fife and drums coming closer and closer, soldiers on the march to finish what Hannibal has started for them.

The last shot from Hannibal rings out at the same time the first shots from the army do. The second in command is down. The camp is plunged in chaos, nobody sure anymore of who should be giving orders and who should be taking them. This will be a slaughter.

Hannibal agilely jumps down and slings his musket over his shoulder, heading back towards their own camp.

Their job is done here. There’s no need for them to linger on what has been done.

**Author's Note:**

> Hardtack: Basically an especially terrible cracker, this is a mixture of water, salt, and flour that has been baked until it's about as hard as a chunk of metal (it should be soaked in water, chicory, or broth before eating, because it will break your teeth). 
> 
> Chicory: American soldiers couldn't and didn't want to drink British-imported tea, so they drank chicory instead, which is similar to coffee.


End file.
